Nocturne
by rendezvous
Summary: [VH] —Descend into nothing but dusk and daybreak— Realize this: one empty room, one perfect stranger, one more night before the moon flees the sky again. Wind and salt and fire and wings. [Hitomi][Don’t let me fall...]


Nocturne 

**Disclaimer**:  I really, really, really love Van.  Unfortunately, he's only a cartoon character.  And hell, he's not even _my _cartoon character...  ::goes off to cry in a dark corner::

**Summary**: [V/H] —Descend into nothing but dusk and daybreak— Realize this: one empty room, one perfect stranger, one more night before the moon flees the sky again.  Wind and salt and fire and wings.  [Hitomi][Don't let me fall...] **_Basically my take on what would've happened to Hitomi if she couldn't wish herself to Gaea (and Van) anymore.**_  

**AN**:  I think you should...uh...admire my clever use of...uh, alliteration in the summary!  And uh... (Oh, hell, just read it.)

*

You can almost believe, can't you?  When he murmurs against your mouth your name, an exhalation of breath smooth and warm like coffee in the early solitude of morning.  Lips parted, breath thick; he smells of musk, and damp, wind-blown earth, and something sharp, acrid, like gunpowder, or tortured metal.  

_Or maybe that is but a cruel fantasy_

Helpless as always, girl, held captive by one as merciless as a raging tempest.  He finds no resistance, hears no cry to stop.  You have long since surrendered in your fight, and his hands hold you to him; tender once, fierce the next, and it becomes all but a dance of fire, limbs tangled together like finely woven shadows.  The finger that trails up your spine—fear and grief and heady power all twisted together into an involuntary shudder —and your laughter disguised so thinly, pulled frail and stretched to its breaking point.  If you close your eyes and let the darkness come, if you could only just _forget_

_will it all disappear?_  

And the only one left is leaving too, his hands outstretched to you and you running towards him, running, and running, and _running_, but never running fast enough.  

So he leaves.  So you fall—

_Fall into_

—the embrace of another, so willingly losing yourself in a heated moment, nerve ends smoldering and tremors dancing up and down the curve of a shoulder, the arch of neck, the strain of his arms.  He keeps you to him as tight as possession.  Moonlight is a solemn witness; silver spills down the bend and curve of limbs like molten iron, pure as angel wings.  But those wings—oh, how you have longed for the shining down, unseen by eyes, untouched by hands, untainted by destiny. And if only it would enfold you now in a windstorm of white: a soft brush of feathers and silk, the roar of bare skin on bare skin, a soft growl, a sigh; yet it is always someone else.  And you turn back on your memories, girl, you bite down on your lip until it bleeds, refusing even to give voice to his name.

_Can you taste the blood?_   

What for you?  Can't you understand that this is no mere distraction to be tossed aside like a foolish child's toy?  That to play fate is to taunt God?  That you cannot always close your eyes—_and pretend?_

But _oh_, it is so easy, to let yourself go, to lose yourself, if only for this passing reverie.  And when it is all over, the curtain of silver still flung over his form, light tracing lean and sinewy muscles, highlighting black hair blue and violet and violent indigo; what of it now?  Do you gather him to your breast, limbs heavy in despair but never in content—do you draw the side of your thumb against the arch of his raven brows, and remember?  Do you brush fingertips over thick lashes—do they flutter open in a drawn breath?  Can you believe, girl, with your eyes wide open and your body and your mind and your soul stripped naked—can you still believe?

_Almost never, love me always, almost believe_  

He smiles at you, and it steals your breath away.  He's warm and you like it, entwined with him like Daphne and Apollo, her leaves interlaced into his brow.  And yet it leaves no such question—his eyes are the color of old amber, flecked by jade green.  Are you resisting the urge to scream, to throw him off, to run away?  

Girl, you were never much of a coward.  And so you stay.  Are you a fool for it, then?  

You dream of, you pray for—deep wine, burgundy, mahogany, a veil of lashes almost too long, too pretty. But he isn't here; he is only a world away.  Stupid girl.  To think that a stranger could somehow sweep away the awful emptiness in your heart.  

But this stranger is so like him, isn't he?  Angled cheekbones, straight nose, his hair silken smooth to the touch—only shorter, with more of a wave, barely noticeable but to someone such as you; his palms that wander down to the small of your back—you feel the skin, and it is too soft.  There are no calluses from sword training or vicious combat.  Suddenly you hate him for reminding you of (_Van_) and yet being so imperfect in every way.

_you **are** a fool if you still yearn for these things  _

Hands rove over ridged planes, burning skin, and his breath is warm against the side of your neck.  He is content; he cuddles you like you are his favorite stuffed toy, arms and legs a warm dream around you and your head tucked underneath his chin.  A perfect match—and some part of you is laughing hysterically at this, laughing and crying and screaming for something that never was.  And then—

The screeching cacophony that is the calm within you freezes; it breaks like sugar-spun glass.  The world has crystallized into emptiness, and so has he stilled against you—you, girl, so silent and unmoving against him like the dead of midnight.  

_his back oh god oh god what is this—?_

The clock is ticking.  Do you not hear it?  His eyes are hazel, the curve of his lips too joyful, too open, to be your perpetually grieving boy-turned-man, burdened by his hidden sorrows and his hardened shell which you tried hard, so_ hard_, to break through.  

And you did, in the end, but what does it matter now?  Fate was always—_is _always—a harsh mistress.  

He draws you closer, and closer still; moonlight wavers uncertainty as curtains flutter like shredded ribbons; a seagull cries—the world lives and relives.  He's gripping you by the arms, trying to call you back to him, the strength in the slender hands remembered once and deliberately buried beneath tears and denial and anger.  But always remembered again. 

You ask him if they _(they_) still hurt.  The whisper is almost lost as it rides the thick sleep of silence and shadows.  He's quiet—do you expect no less? —but when he answers it's with a kiss, a chaste brush that burns into something more, something hungry and trembling and demanding, all at the same time.  You cling to him, he a lifeline to the drowning; it becomes almost a matter of survival, his mouth hot against yours, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, wings to the pyre.  

Between the rise of bared shoulders and underneath strands of wayward ebony, you've found the scars, ridged tissue and supple skin laying their claim in the valley of his spine. 

The scars.  _His wings burst free; remember the pain on his face; the wings burst free, from his back, his **back**—_

Mottled rough like velvet over crumbling granite.  They are his remnants of a distant past.  Another life.  Are they not?

_Scars—on his back—I—_  

**_Van._**

You care, girl.  Because now you know—you need not_ pretend_, any longer.

*

**AN**:  (Heh heh heh...yummy Van...heh heh heh...*cue evil-fangirl music*)

::clears throat::  _Anyway_, I was aiming for tasteful, i.e. nothing you wouldn't find in your average PG-13 movie.  But if someone thought this was terribly scandalizing, then drop me a note and I'll up the rating.  So, uh, tell me how I did!  O.O  Not too badly, I hope?  ::nervous laughter::    


End file.
